Aspects of Play: Internet Games

Sniper Assassin 3

Within this game, you play as a sniper that has to complete a shooting contract; it is a fun little game as it makes you think because the people you are trying to kill are all stickmen and they all look the same, so the player has to read through the contract thoroughly to be sure they are killing the right person. As you are playing as a premade character within the game, this puts it directly into the mimicry category. I found whilst playing this that there is a bit of chance included into some levels as the the person you’re trying to snipe from the contract could be doing the same movements as another innocent character, this can almost be like a 50/50 chance of success.

During this Stickman shooter which I think was a rather easy game to play if you read the contract properly, I feel I entered a state of control as the challenge wasn’t to difficult to overcome and my skill level was definitely higher than the challenge at hand.

Bejewelled Blitz is a puzzle game that requires you to achieve a large score within a certain amount of time by lining up 3 or more jewels in a row, the more consecutive match ups gives you a higher score. This game is played through Facebook and it has a leaderboard of all your friends scores which can make it very competitive due to you wanting to achieve a higher score than them. This game also falls under the Alea category because of the unseen falling jewels from the top of the scene, they can fall down and match up a few various jewels without you having to do anything.

A feature I enjoy about bejewelled blits is the timer, I think that when a player is being timed they have more of an urge to complete and do better at the game. In this game it makes you concentrate hard and can in turn make for a better game.

I found myself entering a state of flow when I had a good run of moves because I was concentrating so much, but once I realised I couldn’t move, I soon got frustrated and anxious as time is of the essence.

This is a puzzle game where you have to click a ball at a certain time so it drops and falls through moving obstacles and into a hole. There are many different levels varying in difficulty but all with the same art style. The design is very simple and is cleverly done, simple colours make it easy to understand and follow but when you get further and further through the levels, the basic designed obstacles move more freely and faster, making you disorientated as you have to try and find the right moment to drop the ball.

You get 3 lives to start with, you get points for every level you complete; each level score adds up and when you lose all 3 lives there is a final score; where you can submit to a highscore leaderboard. This adds competitiveness to the game and gives the player a reason to replay it again.

When playing this you can get into a flow state if you have a decent run of successful moves but once a level becomes to tedious and difficult, you can start to get rather anxious.

The objective of this deep thinking item finding puzzle game is to find various objects around rooms to help you escape the school, items could be keys, knives, straw and other random objects. Some objects can be combined to make more useful objects used for important parts of the game. I found while playing this that some of the mechanics weren’t fully finished as I was clicking and nothing was happening but other than that, it was a fun and deep thinking game.

At first the rooms were quite misleading and confusing because of the way you moved from room to room; you would think you’re moving to the desired room but in fact you would be moving back into the room you came from, this was very disorientating and frustrating at times.

I definitely entered a state of flow due to wanting to complete this puzzle challenge completely. Although at times i had to stop and have a long hard think about what to do and where to go.

This is a tower defense game where the objective is to build various towers to defend against hordes of different types of enemies. As you progress through the levels, you can upgrade various towers and powers to make the harder levels less challenging. After a certain amount of levels, there is a boss to defeat; also the further into the game you go, much tougher opponents will appear. Each enemy will have strengths and weaknesses against the players characters and towers, for example the ‘Wulf’ enemy has high speed movement and can dodge melee attacks but don’t have much health and are weak against artillery strikes.

Kingdom Rush falls into a multiple of Caillois’s categories, the first being competitive (Agon) as the game has achievements for the player to strive for, making them want to return and defeat the game at the different difficulty types. It also falls into the Illynx because of the high intensity of enemy hordes attacking, in the later levels, there will be a lot of enemies that come at once and this can be slightly overwhelming, making you confused and disorientated. Also as you are controlling many different characters, this puts the game into the mimicry category as well.

The reason I kept going back to play this game is because of the special game modes they created for it. Once you completed a level on Campaign if would unlock a Heroic mode and Iron Challenge for the said level. The heroic mode would give the player special challenge rules they must obey or they would fail. Example of these rules would be 6 Elite waves, 1 life total and no heroes. The iron challenge is even harder, this mode takes away certain things from the level, things like archers, mages or artillery etc. I particularly enjoy these modes because it keeps bringing me back to the game and if I fail then I have to keep trying and trying until I defeat the challenge.

I found it incredibly easy to enter flow right from the start due to the easy rules and tutorials you have to follow, it made you understand what you had to do quickly. When starting a level, I would enter a flow state straight away due to the high amount of enemies that were attacking, it would require a high level of concentration because some enemies would move very fast.

This is a unique mini golf game where the levels change as you play. At first glance of the environment, it would seem like quite a jumble and confusing, but once you started playing, you soon realised that it was one giant set of levels that are linked together and interactive. Instead of being a normal mini golf game where you pot the ball and move onto the next hole, within this game all the levels are small and they fit into the same screen. When you pot a ball it moves you onto a piece of the environment which will change and animate into a mini golf green. Depending on how many shots it takes to pot the ball determines how many points you achieve.

It can be quite competitive because of the scores you get after each hole, it can make you want to go back and retry a level to see if you can beat your other score. First time playing it, I found it very disorientating due to the unique design of the environment but after a while you get used to it and can appreciate the time spent designing the levels.

A feature that I particularly enjoyed in ‘Wonderputt’ was the interactive and animated levels. If you complete a hole, when you move onto the next one it doesn’t just put you into the level, the hole will generate in different and wacky ways. Sometimes asteroids will fall and create the level, or aliens will create the level or even cows eating grass will create the level.

I found it rather hard to enter a flow state because of the angle the camera is positioned for the game, as it overlooks everything, you are unable to change the camera angle, this made certain shots difficult to do and sometimes the viewpoint was obstructed in a way. I would say I entered a state of relaxation as the challenge was not too high and I had played a lot of mini golf games in the past so I knew what I had to do.

In this maze game, you play as a little man, controlled by the mouse and you have got to manoeuvre him through various levels of mazes, getting past moving obstacles. Levels are easy to do and complete at first but once you move your way through more and more levels, they become more challenging and confusing. Although the levels are designed in a very simple way, with simple shapes and colours, the further you get into the levels it becomes more complex. As rotating pieces, moving pieces and keys are implemented, this makes for a much more difficult game.

After each level is completed, a time is shown of how long it took to complete. This can make it very competitive because it makes you want to try and beat your own score or maybe a friends score. You control a character around the mazes so this puts it into the Mimicry category. Also it sits in the Illynx category because of the fast paced moving shapes in the levels, which sometimes you have no idea where or what they are going to do and having to time your movement with the objects is another challenge within itself.

I particularly like the concentration that is needed to play this game, because as you move the character through the maze you are not allowed to touch the walls or any objects that may be in your way, if you touch them then you have to start from the beginning. This allows a player to enter a state of flow more easily if they are concentrating thoroughly. Which is what I was experiencing, as I didn’t want to lose or fail.

This is a zombie survival side-scrolling RPG game where you play as a man who is trying to find his wife in the city while you fight off many zombies. In the game, you can find many different types of items to help you on your way as well as meeting people who will help you too. While you search for items, need it be food, clothes, weapons or ammo, you will be attacked by many variants of zombies, from slow, fast, fat, thin and ones who are totally unaware. When collecting and killing, you gain experience points which will level your character up. each level you gain points to increase certain statistics of your character, you can upgrade attributes like pistols, blunts, first-aid, survival and many others; each stat having their own use for the player.

As you are controlling a character, who you are levelling up and upgrading throughout the journey, this places the game into the mimicry category. As well as that, in the game sometimes while you are entering room to room, you can enter a room full of zombies, it’s in these circumstances where it can be quite disorientating because the game will place the character in the center of the room while there are lots of zombies around you, by the time you’ve realised which one is you, you have been attacked and lost a great deal of health.

Although achievements are found in a great deal of games nowadays, I enjoy completing the achievements in The Last Stand. This is because of the large array of achievements they offer to the player, from collecting certain items to killing a zombie a certain way, it gives the player a reason to go back and play the game.

I feel that I definitely entered a state of flow right from the get go, as you are flung directly into character creation and then into the fight and the story of the game.

Shine is a pixelated puzzle platformer where you control a little man called Lucia with the directional keys but you also have to control a light orb with the mouse. The light orb will light up the area it is placed, this is so you can look ahead and see where and what to do as the level is very dark. The objective is to get lucia safely through the level without him falling or being killed by spikes, so he can reach the door, but you also have to be careful of the light orb because if it touches the walls or goes off the screen then it will explode and you have to start again. The design of the game is very intuitive with the control of both the character and the light orb together, making them work as one can be very difficult but when it works it makes the levels far more easier.

As you are controlling a character through the darm and dim levels, it puts Shine into Caillois’s Mimicry category. As well as this, I think the game fits directly into the Illynx category due to the confusing and disorientating levels and controls. As the levels go on, the levels become more crowded with moving platforms and objects, this makes it very difficult to move lucia and the light orb together aswell as avoiding the platforms, it becomes very disorientating.

Although it is a very good concept of having to control two different elements to complete each level, I feel it requires a lot of patience and time to complete each level. I found it very difficult to enter a state of flow due to the complexity of the two controls you had to manage, it became very confusing and I would soon enough die or the light orb would hit a wall and explode, I would say I reached a state of anxiety due to my low skill level and the high challenge level that I encountered.

Toss the Turtle is a Cannon highscore game. Where you have to fire a turtle out of a cannon and try to get it the furthest distance using weapons and randomly placed objects on the ground. The make the turtle move further you can use the arrow keys to determine it’s position, allowing you to move the turtle onto certain objects which in turn help it move further along. These objects could be good or bad, good ones could be bombs, jetpacks or a chainsaw wielding mad man, who be fire you forward, bad items are spikes and they will stop you in your place. While flying through the air you can collect cash which can be spent in the shop which will allow you to buy upgrades to make it easier for you to gain a higher score, items like bombs, cannons, tanks and missiles; these all will send you flying high and far.

Although it is a simple concept for a game, to gain a high score, a game like this can be quite hard for someone to keep playing and I feel that the medals and achievements are used to keep the people playing. When you do lots of something you can gain medals, things like land on 50 bombs, reach a certain distance and even play for a certain amount of time. Some medals give you in-game boosts, for example increase bomb power, which will blast you higher than before.

As you are controlling a turtle, this game fits into the mimicry category. It also fits into the Agon category due to the highscoring system it portrays, as a highscore game can be very competitive between friends and even yourself as you try hard to defeat a previously set score.

At first when I reached a high score I was definitely in a state of flow but because such a high score was set, I found it boring and frustrating to keep trying to beat the high score I had set myself. Although gaining enough cash to buy an upgrade made me play it that little extra bit more.